CORRESPONDENCE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume III, Issue 194, 6 January 1882, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

OUR ROADS. TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAE. | Sir,— ln your New Year's greeting to your subscribers you mentioned the growth of Normanby during the past few months, and spoke of the anticipated addition to the importance of the place when increased business should accrue from the opening up of the Continuous Reserve. Pleased as the people of Normanby are with the prospect foreshadowed, they at tbe same time, are at loss to know how communication with the reserve, and in fact, with Okaiawa and the district on the south of Waingongoro is to be maintained, unless something is speedily done towards making tbe road from here in something like a state of safety for the traffic of carts and drays. At present, the road running through Mr. Caverhill's property is absolutely dangerous, even during the present dry weather; parts being entirely unformed, and holes existing, which it is dangerous to drive over, many of tbem being fully 3 feet deep, with precipitous sides. One capsize has already taken place, and the narrow escapes are too numerous to particularize. Throughout the whole route on both sides the river, the least wet weather makes the road muddy in the extreme, and nothing but metalling will improve it. Tbe throwing up of the loose earth in the process of formation, has rendered it worse than when tbe old dray track passed over tbe ground untouched by the tools of the contractor and bis men. No time is so good as the present for the commencement of whatever metalling is to be undertaken, and tue attention of tbe Hawera Road Board is directed to the fact, that unless something is speedily done serious accidents may be expected m tbe immediate future, and stoppage of all traffic during the ensuing winter. Doubtless it is to the advantage of Hawera that tbe road should be imi passable, and the trade thus diverted to i its own business people, through tbe neI cessity of the settlers to use the main J south road further to seaward ; but it is ' equally to the advantage of the Waimate settlers around and to the eastward of Okaiawa, and the business people of Normanby, that communication should be safe and easy with the latter place, and as they contribute their quota towards tbe revenue of the Board, so they expect an equitable division ot the funds in the making of the various roads throughout the district, over which the Board has jurisdiction. The making of this particular road means the advance of Normanb}'; and stoppage of communication " with the Plains will be followed by stagnation in business, and if permanent, will result in tbe ruin of the township. Normanby has always been tbe trading centre for the district through which the road spoken of runs, and it is of paramount importance that the coming winter shall find the road in a state to defy the wet weather to be expected. — I am, &c, Nobmanby.